A wish for the sky…

Today as part of the Couplets poetry blog tour, I’m featuring the poet Cara Holman here on my blog.

Name
Cara Holman

Where I’m From
I was born in San Francisco, grew up on Long Island, moved back to California to attend college, and then lived in Seattle and Austin, before finally settling in Portland (Oregon!) in 1991.

My Blog
Prose Posies

How We Met
I met Christina in much the same way I’ve met most of my online poetry friends. Her name kept popping up all over the place in haiku journals and online poetry sites, including NaHaiWriMo and Poetic Asides. Soon we became Facebook friends. We both recently had haiku appear together in the March/April 2012 Writer’s Digest magazine.

How Long I’ve Been Writing
After a few awkward attempts at writing poetry in my childhood, I tabled my efforts until 2007, when I joined a writing group for cancer survivors. Over the next three years, and with the constant support and encouragement of my writing group, I first began writing prose, and very soon after that, poetry. It wasn’t until 2010, though, that I turned to haiku and related forms.

What I Write
These days, I mostly write haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun, and rengay. I have tried my hand at a variety of forms though, including triolets, prose poetry, four and twenties, Kelly and Collum lunes, hay(na)ku, Fibonaccis, monotetras, rondeaus, blitz poems, the bop, limericks, cascade poems, sevenlings, and sestinas.

A Poem (Okay, three)

My first published poem:
Sleeping With an Open Window
Frogs, he says
Crickets, I insist
We stop again to listen.
(Four and Twenty, 1:2, November/ December 2008)

A haiku:

another biopsy–
plucking at the flowers
on my hospital gown
(Winner of the Writer’s Digest Poetic Form Challenge: Haiku, December 2011)
(Also appeared in Writer’s Digest magazine, March/April 2012)

A tanka:

our favorite walk
by the river–
deep in conversation
we cover
the same old ground
(Second Place, 2011 San Francisco International Competition: Haiku, Senryu, Tanka, and Rengay)